More About Dr. Paari Vijayaragavan

More About Dr. Paari Vijayaragavan

He joined Coimbatore medical college, Coimbatore for his MBBS course and successfully completed the course with honors in Opthalmology, Obstetrics and gynecology and general surgery.

He was also awarded the prestigious Dr. Sengaliappan award for the best outgoing student in general surgery for the year 1995.

It was here that he met his college sweetheart, Dr. Priya who went on to become his wife and best friend for life. Dr. Priya Paari has established herself as a successful obstetrician and Gynecologist in her own right and practices at Kovai Medical College and Hospital in Coimbatore apart from holding the post of Associate Professor in the Obs and Gynecology department at KMCH Institute of medical sciences and research medical college.

Dr. Paari was the only student in his MBBS batch to clear the All India Medical Postgraduate entrance examination on the first attempt in the year 1999, even before his compulsory internship was completed, and went on to bag an MS (General Surgery) seat in the highly coveted University college of medical sciences, Delhi.

UCMS is notable for consistently ranking in the top 10 medical colleges in India, year after year in various surveys. He notes that his postgraduate days in general surgery were the busiest and wonderfully rewarding days of his medical education. UCMS and the attached GTB hospital heavily exposed him to multi-various kinds of general surgical cases, especially life-threatening emergencies which made sure his foundation in the basic surgical principles was laid pretty strongly.

He feels privileged to have been one of the favorite post-graduates of the Director of the general surgery department Prof VR Minocha and Prof Sanjay Gupta, renowned academicians, who instilled in him the ethos of hard work and ethical medicine, which to this day he holds on tightly.

Hard work, Observation, Reason, Human Understanding, Courage, Dedication all these make the physician

Why liver/pancreas surgery?

Though Dr Paari had decided quite early in his MBBS student days to pursue surgery as the preferred branch, there were two things that pushed him towards HPB surgery. Those were the days in early 1990's when HPB surgery was not an established branch of its own. The two reasons why the branch had not established itself were the following beliefs in the surgical circles: 1. the pancreas is like a sleeping tiger in the den formed by the duodenum ( small intestine); never touch it or it bites you back very badly and 2) the liver is like a blood filled sponge; if you cut it and you can't stop its bleeding. A certain level of respect and distance was maintained from these two organs in the surgical fraternity of the day. During this time as a final year MBBS student in 1995,he once had a chance to watch a lateral pancreaticojejunostomy ( a surgery to remove pancreatic stones) being performed by his surgery unit chief Dr Jeya Singh and he was stunned by his eloquence in performing the surgery in the oft avoided area. He was very much attracted towards the almost orphan field of liver and pancreas surgery and developed a keen interest area which would later on lead him to pursue the surgical gastroenterology and then specialize in HPB surgery. Hence after his successful completion of the MS( general surgery) course, he set his goal of getting trained in M.Ch surgical gastroenterology in the best available institute of the day, The Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow. It is notable that when he was selected to the prestigious M.Ch seat in surgical gastroenterology, it was one of the only 4 seats available in the all India quota for the whole country. Dr Paari considers the four years he spent in GI surgery and HPB surgery under the stalwarts like Dr VK Kapoor, Dr R Saxena,DR S Sikora and Dr Rajneesh Singh as the most productive years of his life despite it being extremely draining both physically and mentally. He believes the institute to give the best training in handling complex situations and managing unmanageable complications in GI and HPB surgery, far better than many of the Western institutions he had been in later in his life. The confidence of handling complex HPB cases and clarity of thought process required in managing challenging HPB and liver transplantation cases is directly attributed to his well spent time at SGPGIMS.

Why transplantation?

Having reached a summit of M.Ch in surgical gastroenterology at SGPGIMS, Dr Paari realized that even within the branch, the liver transplantation was being considered an ultimate summit. Liver transplantation was being tried out at SGPGIMS with only moderate success at that time. Dr Paari, being a workhorse, was picked up naturally by the consultants as the points man for handling the liver transplantation cases both in pre and post operative period. He along with his colleague Dr Ajay Sharma, ended up literally living with the liver transplant patients, day and night, till they were successfully discharged (sometimes). He also saw first hand the difficulty and often heartbreaking failures in liver transplantation of those early days. The field was totally fascinating in it being an ideal mix of medicine, surgery, immunology, microbiology and good clinical sense. He saw it as a challenge and decided to pursue his interest in liver transplantation which he successfully accomplished later on under the leadership of his mentor Prof Surendran.

Kidney transplantation

Kidney transplantation was not his primary aim or interest when embarking upon the journey to University of Rochester, New York for getting trained in the science of transplantation. The American system of transplantation training included mandatory training in liver, kidney and pancreas as a whole apart from HPB surgery and vascular access procedures. Though the training in kidney transplantation was initially a by-product of his endeavor to get trained in liver transplantation, during the later part his stay in Rochester,NY, he picked up immense interest in the procedure too and went on to have a stellar run as the lead kidney transplant surgeon upon return back to India at MIOT International ,Chennai. His partnership with leading Nephrologist Prof Rajan Ravichandran at MIOT International was able to successfully get hundreds of patients on foot and out of dialysis and he continues to take keen interest in kidney transplantation and vascular access ( AV fistula ) procedures.

Dr Paari Vijayaragavan takes pride in being a product of Coimbatore, the soil that uniquely breeds courtesy, determination, hard work and entrepreneurship. He is heavily invested in making his dream of an ethical, transparent world class HPB and liver/kidney transplantation facility available in the Kongu region of Tamil Nadu. He is attached to the Kovai Medical center and hospital, the most advanced health care institute of the region, which is an apt platform for undertaking such complex procedures.

Dr Paari Vijayaragavan | Multi Organ Transplant Specialist | India

ulti Organ Transplant Specialist in Coimbatore

Multi Organ Transplant Specialist in Tamil Nadu